WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump is doubling down that we should “nationalize” elections after he claims there’s widespread voter fraud and refuses to accept the 2020 election results. His latest remarks came hours after the White House tried to walk back his comments by saying the President was joking. However, some congressional members are not finding his comments funny.
In a podcast interview earlier this week, President Tdump said Republicans should take over voting procedures in 15 states but did not specify which states. On Tuesday, he again floated the idea they should nationalize federal elections.
“Take a look at Detroit, take a look at Pennsylvania, look at Philadelphia, look at Atlanta,” said the President. “Look at some of the places that have horrible corruption on election and the federal government should not allow that. The federal government should get involved.”
Article One, Section Four of the Constitution explains that the states have primary authority over election administration. Some members worry this is the administration’s attempt to insert itself into election matters.
“Does Donald Trump need a copy of the Constitution,” asked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D- NY). “What he’s saying is outlandishly illegal.”
We asked some congressional members about the President’s comments:
“I didn’t hear the President’s comments on nationalizing but it would be great to have one standard across the country to cast our votes,” said Rep. Nick Langworthy (R- NY). “It would great to see a standard. The President said something that I saw along the way about paper ballots. At least there’s a paper trail; you know where the vote is and people can’t be denied. Theres a lot of different directions, people can go on this and conspiracy theories sometimes run amuck with this but in New York I feel our system as we have it works there’s been a little bit of judicial contortionism on New York trying to get to a no-excuse absentee- they’ve done that and it’s not being widely used because we have ten days of early voting which I think is just the right amount of early voting.”
Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R- PA) described the President’s comments as “rhetoric”. “Our Constitution is very clear our elections are determined by our state legislators,” said Rep. Thompson. “They determine the time and the place and the method of elections. That was abused obviously in the past with COVID. It was abused by some governors, some state Supreme Courts, especially in Pennsylvania as a leading example. So, we’re not looking to nationalize, we’re looking to make Americans’ votes count and not canceled because of fraud and abuse.”
